… day, and there have been quite a few of those just recently, haven’t there?

I think that I left you at Washington Services the last night, and from there I went on to Whitburn to spend the night by the seaside.

Unfortunately my little hidey-hole there was otherwise occupied so I had to search elsewhere.

There’s a nice cul-de-sac just across the road from the promenade that is a useful place to park up.

And that’s where I should have been last night – somewhere out by that headland over there near Whitburn.

But I’m not complaining at all about where I ended up. It was nice and quiet – much better than I anticipated.

This an area that I know very well from when I used to spend a lot of time up there in a different life, and so I took the opportunity to go for a wander round.

It’s what early mornings are for, isn’t it? Especially when those early mornings are as nice as this one.

A little dull at first but the sun soon came out and I had a lovely walk along the promenade.

And I was swamped with telephone calls too – it seems that word has spread about that I’m over here right now and I seem to be in great demand.

I walked down almost as far as Sunderland – only about a mile or so, it has to be said.

Sunderland is a port at the mouth of the River Wear and the entrance – the Roker Pier – is protected by a beautiful Victorian construction that despite everything that the modern world can chuck at it, still retains most of its contemporary charm.

No ships though. It’s been … ohhh … a whole week since I’ve seen a ship! That’s no good!

This statue here is known as Bede’s Cross. It commemorates the life of the aforementioned and was designed by Charles Clement Hodges and erected in 1904.

He was born sometime around 672 just down the road in the town of Wearmouth and died in 732.

He was a monk at the Abbeys of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow and his claim to fame is that he wrote a book An Ecclesiastical History of the English People of which several copies survive today.

This is the book which provides most of the History of England from the departure of the Romans until his death.

This afternoon I drove down to the big ASDA on the old Boldon Colliery site.

Here, Strawberry Moose met up with his sister and her friend Natasha and they had quite a chat about their adventures and what had happened to them since they last met.

While we were there I took the opportunity to return to her her coat and another one or two things that be had brought back with him

Another opportunity that I took was to have a little wander around the shop. Amongst the exciting things that I found were some 75-watt inverters for just £7:99. They had three in the shop.

After I left, there were none. Handy little things, those.

It’s not finished yet – not by a long chalk.

Later in the evening saw me in Hexham, round at at Dave’s. He needed his Detective Agency website bringing up-to-date and so that was another task that had been on my list of things to do.

We had a really good chat about this and that for quite a while.

And despite the lateness of the hour, I still had things to do. I have to be on my way to Edinburgh.

Well, Rosslyn actually. Something about my trip to Canada in 2010 had come up.